The present invention relates to methods for fabrication of metal nanofibers, by using large scale stacking of metal components and mechanical deformation techniques. It further describes methods of integrating these primary nanofibers into more complex articles including cables, yarns and textiles.
Technology relating to nanoscale materials has become an increasingly important area for technical development, and remains under broad scrutiny for scientific, commercial, and military applications. There are unique physical properties of materials at this scale, and a wide range of potential applications proposed to take advantage of these unique properties. Potential market applications for this technology include smart filters for medical, biological and chemical purposes; electric textiles that power sensors, electronics, and communications gear; and improved military garb using more flexible and stronger body armor.
Although nanofibers of metal, carbon, and other inorganic materials have been fabricated, these have typically used atomic scale methods which build up the fibers one atom or atomic layer at a time. These methods are slow, tedious, and extremely expensive. The aforementioned applications all require substantial quantities of fabric or cable, and presently known technologies are too slow and expensive to meet these needs.
However, large scale industrial methods exist for processing micrometer scale metal fiber composites, for example in multifilamentary superconductors. The present invention builds on this prior art of micrometer scale filamentary composites, and extends it to nanometer scale fiber composites. In addition it combines selective metal extraction through chemical etching with the prior art superconductor composite technology to extract nanofibers from the composite metal articles.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to extend large scale multifilamentary composite processing from the prior art of micrometer scale filaments to nanometer scale fibers, which can thereby be produced in sufficient quantity and length to enable their commercial viability.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a method of chemical extraction of these nanofibers by etching.
An additional object of the invention is the integration of these extracted fibers into forms which can be directly applied, such as cables, yarns, and textiles.